Tips, news and commentary for business-to-business journalists, from the American Society of Business Publication Editors.

Paper Looks Different Today

By Paul Miller

I spent my Sunday afternoon going through a ton of old magazines, conference brochures and other 8-1/2″ x 11″ printed materials I’d been filing on some bookshelves of my home office. It was the first time I’d purged myself of stuff like this in four years and I only hope the recycle collector has enough room on his truck for it all.

Funny thing about this process though. I found myself looking at all this paper differently than ever before. Even though I’m constantly tossing newspapers into the recycle bin, the enormous stacks of magazines I got rid of really made me feel like I was unloading what’s becoming a bygone era. I almost felt like I was throwing out old phonographs or 8-track tape players.

As I prepare to leave my job of the past 3-3/4 years once it’s terminated next week, I’ve come to the realization that as chief editor for a national business publication in charge of every letter and image that’s printed and posted on our Website and e-newsletters, about 95 percent of the files I kept throughout my tenure were on my computer. I threw out almost all my file folders because most of them I had inherited from my predecessor. And they’re pretty useless now.

Having grown up with so much print all around me, I feel like we’re really smack dab in the middle of a major transformation from print to digital. Because my wife, Donna, does a lot of catalog and online shopping, we still get plenty of catalogs. And catalogs are far from dead yet. So are magazines. Like I said, we’re right in the middle of this shift.

It’s hard to say how soon we’ll move toward the end of this transformation, but I just found it a bit eerie today, because it really began to sink in that the shift is taking place for real now. The reality is, I believe the message that people like Al Gore have been preaching for years is starting to sink in on people in a subtle sort of way. Perhaps it was accelerated a bit by the recession or the rising cost of mailing printed publications like magazines and catalogs.

Hard to say, but it’s happening.

Paul Miller has held the dual role of editor-in-chief of All About ROI magazine (formerly Catalog Success) and editorial director of eMarketing and Commerce since early 2006. Due to the down economy, however, parent company North American Publishing Co. recently decided to eliminate both positions, effective Dec. 1, so Paul is seeking new opportunities. You can reach him at p914m@aol.com.

Happy Thanksgiving!

McCracken: Experimentation Vital to Web-Launch Success

By Katy TomasuloPresident, Washington, D.C. Chapter

In 2008, Harry McCracken left his long-time role as editor-in-chief of PC World magazine to launch Technologizer, a Web site devoted to technology news and reviews. McCracken admits he didn’t know whether Technologizer would take off. But he got his answer pretty quickly: Within a few months of launching the site, readership climbed from zero to 500,000 unique visitors.

At the ASBPE Digital Symposium Nov. 6, he offered up some of the tips and lessons he's learned so far:

Informality reigns on the Web. Treat it like a conversation by utilizing opinion and analysis, addressing the reader directly, and encouraging visitors to chime in with commentary.

The smaller your site, the louder you need to be to be heard. If a hundred other sites are covering a story, you won’t get the clicks unless you are either first or are offering a fresher take/analysis.

Don’t overthink SEO (search engine optimization). McCracken uses common sense for headlines and URLs by thinking about what people will type into Google when looking for information. For example, by using the headline “Firefox 3.5 Review,” his article on the release of the latest version of the Firefox Internet browser landed at the top of Google searches.

Don’t write for Google, particularly the idea of putting a keyword in the article dozens of times. “If you use the word ‘laptop’ [repeatedly] in a 400-word story, people are going to know you’re not writing for them.”

But don’t neglect Google, either. McCracken stressed that it’s not as complicated as some make it out to be. Avoid industry jargon and use words that real people use (e.g., use “laptop” instead of “notebook”), a task the Google Trends tool can help you figure out. Read Google’s own advice on making your content Google-friendly and apply to have your magazine’s articles indexed by Google News.

Practice “Link Love,” a golden rule principle of linking unto others as you would have them link unto you.

Reject the notion that only short articles work on the Web. While attention spans are shorter, “Content should be as long as the content justifies,” McCracken said. Technologizer features both long and short items, as appropriate. Short chunks are ideal for getting stuff up fast, for example, but he still has pieces that take longer to develop, just as in print.

Experiment. Experiment. Experiment. Pay attention to metrics to see what topics are of interest, and see what people are commenting on and asking for. “The best way for you to learn is to give it a try.”

Note: An expanded version of this article will appear in the November/December 2009 ASBPE Editor’s Notes member newsletter.

Katy Tomasulo, president of the Washington, D.C., chapter of ASBPE, is deputy editor for EcoHome, Building Products, and ebuild.com.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

There may be repetition here, but I found many of the Tweets from our Digital Symposium to be really informative little nuggets. Look at it this way, you're skimming through your favorite magazine and everything you find is pretty good, but then you find that refrigerator article that is so helpful you have to clip it out and put it up for all to see. I hope you find it here. (Hint: Read from the bottom up to see tweets in chronological order.)